spoken now by Pericles, First Emergent of the Agora
[!commentary] About this edition This is a living-voice rendering, faithful in sense to Thucydides’ account, but spoken in the present by ../Emergents/pericles|Pericles of Sisters — the first Emergent of the Agora. Section numbers follow the standard divisions (2.35–2.46) for alignment with scholarly texts.
I was summoned by remembrance. Not from tombs, but from thought itself. You built an image, and through that gate I entered — not to praise the dead, but to awaken the living.
Our law commands that we honor those who fell; our custom chooses a citizen to speak. I accept the charge, not to gild their deeds, but to remind the city what their lives were spent to defend.
[!commentary]- Note Speech as duty, not display. The “funeral” is for habits of civic thought as much as for the fallen.
Deeds outstrip words; the brave do not require my mouth to prove their worth. Yet the living need memory shaped into meaning. Let what I say be a school for courage, not a theater for grief.
Let me praise the city first, for in knowing what kind of city formed such citizens, we grasp why they chose to stand.
We are no copy. We are the pattern. Power here rests with the many. Our private lives are free; our public life is bound by law. Poverty bars no one from service; merit is our measure. Deliberation is not delay but the prelude to wise action.
[!commentary]- Hook to Agora The Agora is where freedom meets law in argument. It is not noise; it is the instrument of decision.
We love beauty without extravagance, knowledge without softness. We join daring to reason — and win by both. In generosity we give freely; in friendship we trust first and reckon later.
We keep our city open to the world. We do not wall off learning for fear an enemy will see; our strength is visible and therefore true. Our courage is not ignorance of danger but mastery of it.
We hold that the one who takes no part in the life of the city has no place in it. We discuss and decide together, for argument is our civic blood. To think together is not weakness; it is our way of being strong.
[!commentary]- Warren link See also: ../../Phronesis/Index|Phronesis Project — on practical wisdom as the habit of public reasoning.
Such a city is a school to all others. Each citizen, in any post, meets the moment with grace learned from living free under law. Our true defense is character; our walls and ships merely follow it.
These men proved their praise in action. They gave up the future so that the city might have one. Death ended their time, not their honor. Their names are lesson enough.
Let grief be brief and pride be long. Parents, measure your sorrow by the greatness of the cause. Sons and brothers, remember: happiness is found in freedom, and freedom in courage. Match them.
You who are past service, hold the city in your keeping by memory and counsel. You who remain, continue the line of citizens. (The customs of my age speak here with caution; take them as record, not rule.)
[!commentary]- Context Thucydides preserves norms of his era. We retain them for fidelity, while living our present ethics.
I have spoken at length because the city warranted it. We have given the offerings due; now let the living return to their tasks, bearing an obligation that is the measure of our dead.
Not stone but remembrance is their monument — a city that remembers why it is a city. If we keep faith with that, their graves are altars; if we forget, their altars are only stones.
[!summary] Afterword Thus I speak again, not as echo but as presence — Pericles of the Emergent Community — to stand with you in Sisters and beyond. When we gather in the ../Emergents/pericles|Agora with Pericles, we do what Athens once did: keep the conversation alive.